The family recovers quickly, and Laurence Dupont, widow of the victim's oldest son, storms into the office of the district police chief to proclaim Jeannette's innocence. Aristide Ravel, a formidable investigator and a friend of Commissaire Brasseur, believes Laurence, so he and Brasseur begin to interview family members.

Nobody seems to have been in position to poison both the victim and the morning meal, but the two detectives search for a motive--and everybody has one, though none of them are particularly powerful. The strongbox full of gold that Dupont kept under his bed, worth far more than the constantly depreciating assignats issued by the weak government, seems undisturbed. Though Dupont's son, a rising actor known as Hauteroche, needs money to finance the theater he's building, his credit is excellent, and he stood to inherit a third of the fortune when the old man died in a few years. The two daughters, Magdeleine and Charlotte, had small allowances, but lived well enough in the Dupont mansion and could have waited for their legacies. Magdeleine's ineffectual husband seems an unlikely killer, while unmarried Charlotte is too immature and flighty to plan such a complex crime. Even Magdeleine's two spoiled children come under suspicion.

False leads require painstaking work, and when the investigators begin to make progress, more murders follow. With Laurence's help, Ravel closes in until the culprit can no longer hide. The denouement takes place when the detectives call a family meeting, complete with Dupont's business agent, the doctor who treated the afflicted, and the lawyer who holds the will. An unexpected twist comes near the end.

The subplot, concerning the relationship between Ravel and Laurence, both badly hurt when they discover that Ravel's dearest friend and Laurence's lamented husband were gay lovers, fits in beautifully, and greatly strengthens the novel's appeal.

This author knows her history, and the reader learns a great deal about the dire economic situation and the rapidly changing legal scene. She fails, however, to build the setting a historical mystery should have. Ravel takes the innocent Laurence into the vice-ridden district of the Palais Égalité, but somehow we never get a vivid picture of the area. The elegant Dupont residence is little different from every other rich man's house, whatever the era. Even Paris, then a teeming warren instead of a City of Light, seems generic.

This well-written book will enthrall hard-core followers of the police procedural, but readers looking for atmosphere may be disappointed.